


Part of the Team

by cat_77



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: BAMF Malcolm Bright, Gen, Hurt Malcolm Bright, Mugging, Season/Series 01, Team Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-05
Updated: 2021-01-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 03:55:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28575603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cat_77/pseuds/cat_77
Summary: Muggings suck, support of others is something he might someday get used to, and ice is most definitely a good thing.  [Set early Season 1]
Relationships: Malcolm Bright & team
Comments: 5
Kudos: 93





	Part of the Team

“Sorry I’m late, I had to wait for the locksmith,” Bright said as he hustled into the conference room. 

The others were already reviewing the data from the case, Dani not even bothering to look up from the page she was on when she smirked, “Told you those cuffs of yours would get you in trouble someday.”

He rolled his eyes despite the knowledge the action would be missed given her current activity. It saved time, really, as he would have rolled them anyway when Gil added, “You know Jessica is just going to insist you change them back, or at least give her a copy of the key again.”

“My mother is actually the one who made the request, I was simply making sure she didn’t do more than that,” he promised.

It was JT, however, who actually paid attention enough to him when he stepped fully into the room to ask, “You limping, bro?”

That garnered a response from the others, and he soon found himself the object of scrutiny of all three detectives. “It’s nothing,” he insisted. There was no point in full obfuscation, so he didn’t hide it nearly as much when he took his next step. The walk through the rest of the office had been a different matter altogether. He didn’t need the looks or the speculation atop everything else, even if it cost more energy than it was truly worth to walk as close to normal as possible.

“Sit down before you fall down,” Gil ordered with a huff of exasperation. The exasperation turned to unnecessary concern when he added, “Is that a black eye?” It hadn’t been yet when he washed up that morning but, to be fair, he hadn’t glanced in the mirror for at least a couple of hours, and so he admitted that much.

JT tilted his head slightly before he agreed, “Yeah, it’s still blooming.”

Dani’s inevitable demand to know what happened was overridden by Gil’s order of, “Sit down, now, and then you’re going to tell us everything.”

His insistence that he was fine fell on deaf ears, or at least ears that refused to listen. A chair was pulled out and he was near bodily shoved into it, the pressure guiding his shoulders lessened only when a wince slipped through. The leg of his trousers rode up enough to reveal the brace he had picked up at the corner store in an attempt to assuage his mother’s want for him to be seen by a professional, which just served to set his would-be team off that much more. A second chair was slid over and Gil snapped his fingers at him like he was a well-trained dog while Dani simply looked ready to grab and haul the offending appendage into position herself. Outmatched, for the time being, he reluctantly propped his left foot on the seat cushion, but did manage to sneak in a set of raised eyebrows to show that he protested the action, even if it did feel kind of good to get his weight off of it.

While they sorted that, JT had stepped out and grabbed the nearest first aid kit. He activated one of the chemical ice packs and less than gently tossed it down atop the brace, grimacing in apology when he realized how much force he had used. He then activated a second one and gently handed it to Bright instead. Malcolm dutifully raised it to his face, mainly to hide his expression, only to be told, “That one was supposed to be for your wrist. We’ll need another kit if we’re going to get you all. That, or just toss you into the ice bath at the gym.”

Malcolm would have congratulated him on his observation of his hidden injury, or maybe commented that his suit was dry clean only, but was cut off by Gil’s repeated demand of, “Talk. Now.”

“It’s-” he started, only to find his voice muffled by the plastic that technically should not have been in direct contact with his skin anyway. He lowered the pack and went to set it on the table, only to have JT yank his arm forward and his sleeve down as protection and place it there instead. “It’s nothing,” he insisted when he was allowed to speak again. Something like this could have happened at his previous job, and all he would have been required to do would be maybe tell his boss, verify he was good to go, and move on. The fact that his current team showed this much outward concern was kind, but entirely unnecessary. 

“Your watch is missing,” Dani pointed out. “Considering you wear it even when the cuffs give you bruises? Not to mention the fact that you’re limping? What happened?”

Bright sighed and knew they’d get it out of him eventually, it had been silly to think this particular team write off a visible injury without at least a cursory investigation into the source. It was simply their way, as unaccustomed to it as he was. The time JT had gotten into a fender bender on the way to work had had a similar response, now that he thought of it. He was fairly certain Gil had the system flagged to forward him any mention of their names, which meant it was a matter of time before he realized there was no mention due to no actual report. Well, no report until now. It was possible there was currently one in creation if the way Dani grabbed a pad of paper was anything to go by.

“I couldn’t sleep last night,” he began, knowing they’d know it was a common enough occurrence. “I decided to go for a run – and yes I run, JT, I had to pass the field tests at Quantico and it seemed worthwhile to keep up with it.”

“As much you run into instead of out of danger, I’m not surprised,” the other man scoffed. He jerked his chin towards the injuries and asked, “What happened? You faceplant?”

Technically, it was the truth. Technically, he could tell from Tarmel’s posture that he already knew there was something else at play, not to mention everyone gathered had heard him mention the locksmith. They were piecing, or already had pieced, the facts together and to lie now would only piss them off further. He could downplay, maybe forget to mention a detail or three, but full omission was off the table. “I got mugged. They got my watch, my phone, and my keys, along with a possible shiner worse than mine. I got a lightly sprained ankle and maybe a pulled tendon in my wrist. My mother decided we should change the locks as a precaution, and I planned on picking up a new phone tonight.”

“You gave a guy a shiner?” Dani huffed in disbelief. So few believed he had the skills to do so, and he usually used that in his favor, such as the night before. She tugged her curls out of her face the way she always did when she was annoyed and he suspected it was more that he had to used such skills versus his ability to do so, especially when he was fairly certain she had seen him fight in the past. “Let me guess, he was armed and you were not and that is how things escalated?”

“It was only a knife,” he insisted before he thought better of it. Now it was her turn to roll her eyes at him. The others just looked pained. “That I got away easily enough, but it turned out that he wasn’t actually alone, which is how they got me. I figured it wasn’t worth doing more damage for things that could be replaced, even if I loved that watch.”

“Finally, he says something smart,” Gil snarked. He reached up as if to rub at his beard before he stopped himself and glanced back at the icepack covered ankle. “You’re getting checked out anyway because I know you. Is that a brace from the dollar store? How in the world did you fool Jessica with that?”

“Bodega,” he corrected absently. They hadn’t had very many options, so he had grabbed that and some tostadas to nibble on for breakfast while he waited for the locksmith. “And my mother was just happy I thought of at least this.”

He thought that might be that but he was wrong. He caught JT staring at him, almost contemplative for the other man. He gestured for him to say what was undoubtedly on his mind, then regretted it when he asked, “How many?”

Detectives. He worked with detectives that were actually pretty damn good at their jobs. He worked with detectives with a high level of empathy and the need to see things through to their conclusions. It was in their nature. It was also in his nature to not show any weakness that could be potentially used against him, so the conversation was likely frustrating for all. “How many what?” he tried. He even did the extra blink to connote confusion and innocence, though it was clearly wasted.

JT crossed his arms in front of him, unimpressed. “How many jumped you?” he clarified. “You disarmed one and have mentioned your fancy training, Quantico and otherwise, enough times. So, how many did it take to knock you on your ass and for them to get away with the goods?”

Dani caught on quickly while Gil just looked personally aggrieved. “I’m guessing more than two?”

Malcolm sighed, defeated. It was three against one and he always did hate when Gil did that thing that bordered on a guilt trip, but with precisely no actual words. It was as if keeping anything from him, especially a minor injury, was a personal afront. He was reminded of the time when he was thirteen and broke his toe during a hiking trip with him. It was a toe, not a leg, yet Gil insisted they go back and not finish the next few miles despite the supposedly picturesque waterfall that awaited them. With that in mind, barely audible, he reluctantly admitted, “Four.”

“And they didn’t slice you up as a lesson when they got the better of you because?” Dani prompted. Her fingernails dug into her sleeve now, and her lips were pressed into a thin line, the pen and paper all but forgotten. She was infuriated, he could tell that much by her tone alone, but he had to figure out if it was at him or at the situation as a whole.

“Because I knocked the knife down the storm drain,” he replied. He hoped that would be enough for them or at least their pesky report that may or may not have ever been official in nature anyway. As an added bonus, maybe it would be enough to assuage whatever emotion Gil was currently obsessing over.

It was not.

“The. You said ‘the’ knife and there were four assailants. That you didn’t just run from or further disarm,” Dani pointed out. Either she had been paying attention to how important the tiniest details could be, or had always done so and he was just noticing when it was directed at him. He had to say he did not appreciate the scrutiny despite knowing he was more than guilty of it in the past and likely would be in the future. She followed the observation with, “How many other weapons were at play?”

He rubbed at his forehead but knew it was only a stalling tactic. Either he told them now and faced their wrath, or they worked it out of him over time and the wrath was that much greater for the effort they had exuded to get to that point. “At least two Berettas, not sure what the last guy had as he was busy lecturing the kid who first tried to jump me about never losing your weapon,” he blurted.

The “Damn it, Bright,” was expected at that point. The echo of the words was not.

JT and Dani reasoned that it was likely a gang initiation of some sort, and it was nearly the usual time of year for that to be more common. Gil, on the other hand, reasoned something else altogether. “How bad are your ribs?” he asked. He made a face as if to refute the possible injury, but now Gil was the one who rubbed at his own forehead when he admitted, “I want to kick you for this stunt and you didn’t embarrass me in front of the people I’m trying to impress. How bad are your ribs?”

He wasn’t completely positive who did what in the next few seconds aside from it involving a flurry of movement. Someone gripped his shoulders and someone else yanked his neatly pressed shirt from where it was tucked in under his jacket. He was positive that it was Dani that palpitated the bruise as she truly had freezing hands, pretty much constantly.

“Looks like a size ten,” JT mused as he stepped back. “Only the one? Nothing on your back?”

“The bar down the block was starting to let out, so they took off. I got up and went home. There’s a keypad access at the back of the building. Well, keypad that alerts security access at the back of the building. That’s pretty much all that there is to say about what happened, for real,” he insisted. He yanked his shirt back in to place as much as he could as he was not about to undo his belt to tuck it in properly with an audience. 

“So, nothing other than you were mugged at gunpoint and they would have beat the crap out of you but some drunks got in the way,” Dani summed it up drily.

He opened his mouth to protest, but was cut off by Gil’s curt, “You’re getting a report and a medic. You don’t get to look at a single case file until those two things happen.”

Malcolm occasionally remembered when to pick his battles as evidenced by even just the night before and decided it was not worth it on this one either. At the very least, to attempt to do so would be an exercise in futility. While that sometimes worked in his favor in the long run, he simply did not have the energy for it at the moment. “Fine,” he relented. If that’s what he needed to do to be allowed back to work, so be it. Also, the ice actually felt kind of nice, so if he could keep that coming for a while, it might be a good thing.

He earned a brace for his wrist, an improved brace for his ankle, and a single crutch for his efforts. There was also an order to stay off his ankle as much as possible for the next few days as well as a suggestion for x-rays, both of which were phrased in ways that he could ignore, especially as the team foolishly left him alone for the review. As much as possible was relative at the best of times, and the x-rays truly were said with the word “suggestion” attached, which technically meant they were not strictly required. There were also recommendations to ice the aching joints that he knew would be enforced whether he wanted them to be or not given his teammates’ compulsions for care, and to take some anti-inflammatories, of which his mother probably had far higher potency already waiting for him at home than available over the counter anyway.

He hobbled back into the briefing room to be greeted with, “What, no cane to complete the supervillain look? The crutch really clashes with the suit, man.”

“Don’t give my mother ideas,” Bright groaned. He had at least one cane that hid a sword back at the loft, but thought that would both be overkill at the moment as well as only spark a new level of teasing. That, and absolutely no one who knew him would believe it was only a cane.

“Wrist too screwed up for the second one?” Dani guessed. She shoved a chair in his direction and he dutifully sat. She even propped up the crutch against the table when his first attempt had it clatter to the floor. She was clearly still unhappy with him, but her the tension in her shoulders had lessened significantly between the morning and his return, so he took the victory.

“She’s going to get enough of them when she sees you tonight anyway,” Gil reasoned. Off of the look Malcolm gave him, that reason turned to resignation. “You’d rather go back to the loft and deal with all of those steps than deal with your mother for a few days.”

He tried not to smile, but it was a lost cause. “Wouldn’t you?” he asked. The silence he was met with was telling enough. He figured he had wasted enough of their time that day, especially when there were far more important things to deal with, and switched tactics to ask, “Where are we with the Boyers’ case?” He shifted to get a view of whatever was up on the laptop that everyone had found so interesting up until a minute ago, and raised a questioning eyebrow. “The murderer didn’t use a knife, as evidenced by the traces of poison and lack of any open wounds, so why…”

He had to give them credit. Not a single one looked ashamed in the least at being caught. JT just gestured to the screen and said, “Found the storm drain, and the switch the kid tried to use on you. It’s being run for prints.”

“And we’re doing this instead of looking for a killer because…?” he prompted.

It was Gil who replied, “Because we’re waiting on Edrisa’s analysis of the compound found in the victims’ blood anyway, and there’s the infuriating fact that we actually care about you.”

JT held up his hand in protest. “I don’t, or at least not as much as they do. You’re annoying on a good day and don’t have a lot of those. I care about our profiler, the one that helps us put the bad guys away, not bleeding out into a storm drain on Stevens while those bad guys run free.”

“It’s not like they’re going to come back,” he reasoned with a huff. “They didn’t know who I was and I managed to get my phone locked down as soon as I got back to the loft.”

“And if they managed to get it open before then? Even to your emergency contact screen?” Dani pressed. “Even without that, one of them could have followed you and you know it. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have bothered changing the locks.”

JT, however, had a different point of view. “It’s not going to matter because we’re going to catch them before they try anything anyway,” he declared like saying so made it a fact. Off of the look Bright gave him, he simply stared and explained, as though to a child, “Some of the people here actually don’t hate you. Weird, I know, but you tend to help us put people away and, like I said, they like that. They want to keep you around and safe enough to keep doing so.”

“You’re part of the team,” Gil summed it up. His phone chose that moment to ding, and he glanced at it before he announced, “Edrisa’s on her way up; the tox screen came back on the Boyers’ case.”

They spent the rest of the now afternoon reviewing the data for the actual murder case and occasionally lofting food suggestions in his direction that even they knew he would probably ignore. The data itself didn’t change his original profile by much, but a did add a few details to help narrow down the suspects. Both he and Dani wanted a second look at the crime scene, so they spent an additional hour there looking for clues. The largest of such pretty much walking through the door while they were literally right there. He had narrowed it down to two possible pharm techs and Helar jimmied the lock, opened the door, saw them, and tried to take off. They’d have him for trespassing if nothing else, and could tie the rest to him as everything unwound.

That settled, he figured he should turn in for the night. He didn’t know what he truly expected, but Gil insisting on driving him home was pretty much a given. Dani and JT following behind was something he was mildly surprised about. 

Gil parked and handed him his crutch as he got out of the car with a half-assed excuse of making sure he didn’t take a header on the steps. His insistence that he’d be fine was, of course, ignored. “I’ve made it up those things with far worse injuries than this,” he muttered with admittedly a decent amount of petulance. 

“Not exactly helping your case,” Gil shot right back at him. He took out the brand-new spare key he had been given that morning, and managed the lock while Malcolm glanced from the curb to the metal and concrete structure in contemplation. He didn’t go back on his decision, but knew the next few minutes were not going to be the most fun he ever had in his life. The anti-inflammatory he had been given had worn off hours ago, as had any numbing effects of the ice. Gil propped open the door and waited for Bright to shamble his way over to him patiently, undoubtedly knowing precisely what he was thinking.

Or at least tried to shamble. A blur to his left was his only warning, but he’d like to think that he did have decent instincts, when he chose not to ignore them. He planted his feet and swung his crutch upwards and outwards, pivoting at the last moment to avoid the impending collision landing him on his ass. His arms and especially his wrist reverberated with the impact, and the light from the street was enough to illuminate the bruised face of the same kid who had tried to rob him the night before.

“What in the world were you thinking?” he managed when he could catch his breath.

The kid groaned in pain before he replied, “That watch alone, man. If you’re wearing that? You gotta have more inside.”

“And now we have access to it,” a new voice said from just behind him.

Malcolm barely caught sight of the weapon the newcomer held, but JT’s shout of, “Gun!” was enough to make him act. He still held the crutch in his hand and it was a simple enough matter to use it as a makeshift staff. A twirl, a knock, and a swipe, and the man was disarmed. A bend with more discomfort than he would admit to those gathered, and the gun was in his own hand, crutch discarded on the ground. He flitted his attention between the two males closest to him, knowing the other two were held at bay by the now four armed law enforcement/pseudo-law enforcement professionals. It was pretty much over before it even began.

A round of handcuffs later, and Dani approached with a quirk of her lips and a comment of, “Nice move, no ninja cane required.”

He flipped the safety and popped the magazine and offered her out the pieces. JT raised an eyebrow at his actions, and he felt the need to point out, “I was with the FBI? I do actually have training on these things.” He did not feel the need to tell them that he was even a decent shot, at least when his tremor wasn’t acting up.

There were statements and there was takeout and there was being woken from his whole two and a half hours of sleep by someone coming over to install an Arroyo-approved security system that he was fairly certain his mother had contributed to as well. When he insisted on coming into work after being given some rudimentary instructions on the thing, there were a few knowing nods from people milling about the bullpen that he barely knew, but sort of recognized from the night before more than anything else.

“What was that about?” he asked once safely ensconced in Gil’s office to review the wrap up of the Boyers’ matter. His leg was propped up and another ice pack applied, and he knew well enough not to fight either of those two things.

“Told you, you’re part of the team,” Gil huffed. Then, with a smirk, he patted his cheek and added, “Whether you want to be or not.”

He tossed down the file for Bright to sign off on before he walked back over to his desk to deal with other matters, hopefully including an attempt to get a certain watch out of evidence and back in the hands of its owner. File closed, Malcolm spent far more of the day contemplating those words than he would ever admit to the others. It was a different feeling, but not one he would classify as horrible. The only conclusion he reached was that there truly were worse things to belong to. Also? That ice was still a good thing.


End file.
